When Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson travels to Chicago, Washington and London for environmental conferences, Olympic trips and soirees with other mayors, he returns with accolades and to criticism from some who say city business stalls when he is gone.

Anderson was out of town for 73 days in a one-year period from mid-March 2005 to March 2006. Of those 73 days, 53 were weekdays. Ten of the 16 trips he took during that year were for environmental conferences or meetings, particularly related to global warming, his favorite cause.

"We are on the map like almost no other city in the world when it comes to our climate-protection campaign," said Anderson, who has made reducing greenhouse gas emissions and better air quality goals of his administration.

Programs that have snowballed into invitations to international conferences include purchasing wind power for the city, replacing city hall light bulbs with high-efficiency bulbs, switching traditional traffic lights for LED bulbs, and replacing older fleet vehicles with fuel-efficient ones.

Anderson touts the World Leadership Award he got in London in December and an award from the League of United Latin American Cities in March as added exposure for a city that he said still suffers from negative perceptions.

But the national and international attention are extra-municipal and may come at the cost of attention to city business, say Councilman Eric Jergensen and other council members, who question the value of Anderson's "international and national agenda" over a local focus.

"If you're a widow living in Central City, how does it benefit her that you're receiving this award?" said Dave Buhler, the council's chairman. "It's up to him to justify, not up to me to justify, what he does."

City business

Council members said that city business languishes while Anderson is gone. Anderson said the council is responsible for delays. The back-and-forth accusations surfaced over a compatible-housing ordinance from 2005, a proposed ordinance with a requirement for all new city buildings to follow green building standards, a possible bond for new police and fire facilities, and Pioneer Park renovations.

A majority of council members were reluctant to criticize his time away too strenuously for fear that he would start staying home.

The example that Jergensen, Buhler and Council member Jill Remington Love specifically point to is the compatible-housing ordinance the council passed in December. The ordinance restricts height, garage placement and side-yard setbacks to force new and renovated houses to match their neighbors in scale. The statute went through months of revision and public hearings with extensive public comment.